Wellbeing awards

There are currently a range of awards for wellbeing initiatives available across the UK. Your Work Ready dietitian can help prepare you to apply for one or more of these, or assess your existing position, helping you achieve a higher status where possible.

The map below shows specific awards for each country – click the area to show the awards. Below that, there are also some UK-wide awards outlined. Each has links for further information, or ask your dietitian for our mapping document which details each award and how Work Ready prepares you for it.

Healthcare Standards

England

As part of health and wellbeing indicators, NHS organisations are funded to improve the support they offer to healthcare staff to stay healthy. This new focus is on giving staff better access to health and wellbeing initiatives and supporting them to make healthy choices and lead healthy lives. This includes access to healthy food and drink choices.

A BDA Work Ready dietitian can help you to interpret these indicators and provide practical advice, whether you are an organisation providing staff facilities, or a company wishing to promote healthy products.

The GBS for Food and Catering Services apply to healthcare providers either via direct procurement or through their catering contractors. These consist of mandatory standards, that include nutritional requirements and voluntary standards (termed ‘best practice’ requirements). The GBS are additionally linked to standards set in Responsibility Deal targets.

BDA Work Ready Dietitians can advise regarding the GBS nutritional standards and Responsibility Deal Targets and provide practical guidance when looking at these alongside CQUIN indicators.

Wales

This is the national quality mark for workplace health promotion in Wales. Detailed standards that support Healthier Food and Catering Practices are provided.

A BDA Work Ready Dietitian can interpret these standards in terms of the food and beverages that can be provided, as well as cooking and serving practises, and requirements concerning display, pricing and marketing.

All food products supplied/sold through vending machines in hospitals must be tested against specific criteria below to determine whether it should be considered as high in any of the four nutrients: fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt. These are then examined in light of the product category.

BDA Work Ready Dietitians can review product ranges to check suitability of products and make recommendations to support healthier food and beverage choices from vending machines.

Other Standards

The Food for Life Catering Mark indicates a company commitment to ethical, sustainable and fresh food. It encourages organisations to ‘make healthy eating easy’. It only looks at the catering aspect of workplace health and includes a variety of different settings such as universities, hospitals, and workplaces. There is a fixed bronze standard that applies to all caterers while silver and gold are assessed using a points based system.

The BDA Work Ready programme can support the Food for Life Catering Mark in workplaces through its nutritional needs assessment and its workplace tool ‘Assessment of Food and Drink provisions with guidance on implementing practical changes’. Staff awareness of changes in food provision can be supported by interactive group sessions, roadshows and demos and support in communication through the development of tailored materials. It should be noted however that the Food for Life Catering Mark also provide support personnel to organisations.

The Scheme is an independent organisation founded by the construction industry. Construction sites, companies and suppliers voluntarily register with the Scheme and agree to abide by the Code of Considerate Practice, designed to encourage best practice beyond statutory requirements. The Code is in five parts.

The Work Ready programme can contribute to the section Value their Workforce which states that employers should be ‘caring for the health and wellbeing of the workforce’.

The ATNI is founded on the premise that food and beverage manufacturers can make a strong contribution to addressing poor nutrition and related diseases. Companies are rated and ranked under a number of categories including lifestyles, which acknowledges that ‘companies can support healthy diets and active lifestyles for their own staff by providing employee health and wellness programmes.’ This category assesses the extent to which companies support such efforts through criteria including staff health and wellness programmes and supporting consumer-oriented healthy diet and active lifestyle programmes.

Organisations signing up as partners to the Responsibility Deal commit to play their part in improving public health. In signing up, they agree to take action voluntarily to support the Deal’s ambitions.

Collective pledges on alcohol, food, health at work and physical activity set out the specific actions that partners agree to take in support of the core commitments.

One of the Health at Work pledges is to provide healthier staff restaurants (pledge H4).

The Work Ready Programme can support companies in working towards and achieving a pledge.

Workplace Awards

There are a number of awards that applaud good working practices in workplace health. These can often be local to an area. The following are examples of awards that have a national focus.

­An annual award that is designed to provide an opportunity for employers to show their commitment to the health and wellbeing of their workforce through the application of three core principles (leadership, culture and communication). These are the same as the Workplace Wellbeing Charter for England. There is no specific section dedicated to nutrition.

Work Ready can support organisations in providing evidence to support an application.

Business in the Community is a membership organisation for companies in Northern Ireland that are committed to doing business responsibly. CORE is the standard for responsible business set out by the organisation. It is a framework for identifying and measuring corporate responsibility activity and performance. There is a silver and gold award. Their Health and Wellbeing toolkit offers a straightforward six-step approach.

The Work Ready programme fulfils all the characteristics of this six-step approach with regards to nutritional wellbeing. It also fulfils the criteria stated for a successful wellbeing programme.